The Hertford Union Canal or Duckett's Cut, just over 1 mile (1.6 km) long, connects the Regent's Canal to the Lee Navigation in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London.

The act was entitled An Act for making and maintaining a navigable Canal from the River Lee Navigation, in the parish of St. Mary Stratford Bow, in the county of Middlesex, to join the Regent's Canal at or near a Place called Old Ford Lock, in the parish of St. Matthew Bethnal Green, in the said county of Middlesex.

[3] The Act authorised Duckett to borrow up to £50,000 to fund construction, and to charge tolls for using the canal, initially one shilling (£0.05) per ton of goods carried.

For several years around the 1850s it was unnavigable, as a dam was built across it to prevent the Regent's Canal losing water to it.

[4] When the Grand Union Canal Company came into existence on 1 January 1929, it became part of that network.

They are grouped together towards the north-eastern end, and descend approximately 19 feet (5.8 m) from the Regent's Canal to the Lee Navigation.

[8] The lock was designated a Grade II listed structure in 1990, and its bottom gates have rare cast iron balance beams.

[12] A now demolished public house, The Mitford Castle, by the ramp to the canal, on Wick Road, was where Thomas Briggs – the first victim of a railway murder – was taken to die from his wounds, in July 1864 (see Hackney Wick).